You Won’t See Me

The backing vocal accompaniment in “You Won’t See Me” contains a musical secret which actually helps unify the entire song. There’s a descending, four-note chromatic scale fragment buried in one of those inner voices (“voices”, George, not “light”) which recurs throughout.

Huh, Chromatic Scale Fragments?

A chromatic scale is simply a scale which consists of all semi-tones; e.g. C - C# - D - D# - E - F etc. In our standard Major and minor scales you never find even two such semi-tones in a row. However, the use of chromatically altered chords in a progression (the secondary dominant, V-of-V, is an archetypal example) allows us to easily knit fragments of chromatic scales into a tonal harmonic fabric.

The Verse

The verse of “You Won’t See Me” is an unusual eighteen measures long; actually it’s a fairly typical four-times-four measures followed by a repeat of the last two measures of the fourth phrase. When we look closely at the harmony, we discover that every phrase has a downward, four-note chromatic scale fragment buried in an inner voice of the accompaniment; the piano part at first, and later, the backing “oooh la la-la” vocals.

Three out of the four phrases in the verse (the first, second, and fourth) are built on the following chord progression:

Inner voice:  E        D#       D-nat    C#
     Chords: |A       |B       |D       |A        |
   Analysis:  I        V-of-V   IV       I

# You Won't See Me, verse (figure 9.1)
# The inner voice is the four-note descending chromatic line hidden in each phrase (piano at
# first, later the backing vocals). The first system is phrases 1 and 2 (his "2X"), the second
# the third phrase, the third the fourth phrase, whose last two bars are played twice (mm. 15-18).
# In the third system Pollack's beat count fixes the rhythm: the A chord and C# arrive early,
# between beats 2 and 3 (as the essay says), and the inner voice then rises C# D D# E, one note
# a beat, the "mirror image" scale fragment.
key A

system
voice "Inner voice"   | [2X] E4 | D#4 | Dn4 | C#4 |
chords "Chords"       | A{I} | B{V-of-V} | D{IV} | A{I} |

system
voice "Inner voice"   | G4 | F#4 | Fn4 | E4 |
chords "Chords"       | A7{V-of-IV} | D{IV} | d{iv} | A{I} |

system
words                 | r | r | [2X] 1*0.5 &*0.5 2*0.5 &*0.5 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 |
voice "Inner voice"   | E4 | D#4 | D4*1.5 C#4*2.5 | C#4 D4 D#4 E4 |
chords "Chords"       | A{I} | B{V-of-V} | D{IV}*1.5 A{I}*2.5 | - |

This is the same chord progression, by the way, that opens “Eight Days A Week” though the cross-relation between the second and third chords is greatly softened in this instance by the fact that the D# is followed by the D-natural in the same voice.

The third phrase (“We have lost the time”) is built on a different chord progression, but we still have a hidden chromatic scale, transposed this time to fit the new chords:

Inner voice:  G        F#       F-nat     E
     Chords: |A7      |D       |d        |A       |
   Analysis:  V-of-IV  IV       iv**      I

# You Won't See Me, bridge (figure 9.2)
# The top row is the six-note descending chromatic line (F# down to C#, the C# landing on the
# downbeat of the next verse). Pollack's 4 3 under the E bars is the 4-3 suspension over V7: spelled
# here as E7sus4 then E7 (my spelling; he writes just E). The G# dim. 7 is in 4/3 inversion,
# D in the bass, as he explains.
#? Octave of the chromatic line (F#4 down) is a guess; Pollack doesn't say which part carries it.
key A

system
voice    | F#4 | Fn4 | - | E4 |
chords   | b{ii} | G#dim7/D{vii4/3} | D | A{I} |

system
voice    | D#4 | - | Dn4 | - |
chords   | B{V-of-V} | - | E7sus4{V7 4} | E7{3} |

[** Note the use above of the iv borrowed from the parallel minor, a chord we first discussed when looking at “She Loves You”.]

Although I said that the fourth phrase (“And I will lose my mind”) is essentially the same as the first two phrases, there is actually a significant variation in the harmonic rhythm worth noting. Instead of the last two chords each filling a measure each, as they do in the first two phrases, the last chord makes an early, syncopated appearance in between the second and third beat of the measure before the one in which it would seem more squarely to belong.

If you have any doubt regarding the “intentional” use of the chromatic scale as a unifying factor in this song, I direct you to these two syncopated measures (“if you won’t see me” / “you won’t see me”) in which the accompanying voices sing the same four-note scale fragment, this time in the mirror image, upward direction! They even repeat it in measures 17 - 18 for emphasis.

You know there’s a rehearsal of “Two Of Us” in which Paul tells George that “I’ll give you a wink when she goes four in the bar.” I can’t help feeling that the end of this verse in “You Won’t See Me” is metaphorically the same gesture.

One final note — look back to the brief introduction of our song and note how the same syncopation on the same two chords is anticipated there. That intro is so brief and seemingly so inconsequential, but it’s relationship to the end of the verse is yet another unifying force in the song.

By the way, even the middle eight of this song contains a downward chromatic scale fragment which I’ll leave to the inquisitive among you to uncover; two quick hints — it covers six notes, from F# down to C#, and it starts right at the beginning of the break and ends at the return of the verse.

Unfolding Variation in the Vocal Arrangement

The variation of the vocal accompaniment each time the verse is repeated is another point of interest in “You Won’t See Me”. Even a simple narrative description is technically revealing: